Category: 04.ix.22 XIII Post Pentecost

It is certain that a child’s good or evil conduct in life depends on his being brought up well or ill. Nature itself teaches every parent to attend to the education of his offspring. He who has given them being ought to endeavour to make life useful to them. God gives children to parents, not that they may assist the family, but that they may be brought up in the fear and love of God, and be directed in the way of eternal salvation. “We have,” says St. John Chrysostom, “a great deposit in children; let us attend to them with great care.”

The great name of Mary, which was given to the Divine Mother, did not come to her from her parents, nor was it given to her by the mind or will of man, as is the case with other names given to children, but it came from Heaven, as many of the Holy Fathers tell us, and was given by a Divine ordinance. “The name of Mary came from the treasury of the Divinity.”

Many learned Theologians say that a soul that possesses a habit of virtue, as long as it corresponds faithfully to the actual grace which it receives from God, always produces an act equal in intensity to the habit it possesses; so much so that it acquires each time a new and double merit, equal to the sum of all the merits previously acquired.

The wicked have said to God: Depart from us! (Job xxi. 14). When a man consents to mortal sin he says to God: “Go out from my soul, O Lord, and make room for Satan!” Our Blessed Lord complained to St. Bridget, saying: “I am like a monarch banished from his dominions, and on my throne is placed the vilest of plunderers!”

Consider it well and say to thyself: I have a soul and if I lose it, all is lost! I have a soul, and if I were to gain the whole world and in the end lose that soul, what would the gaining of the world profit me then? For where are now the dignities, the pleasures, the luxuries of all those great ones of the world whose bodies are mouldering in the dust, and whose souls are a prey to the fires of hell? My salvation is, therefore, of the highest importance to me, for eternal happiness is at stake.

If Holy Mary, then, as the already destined Mother of our common Redeemer, received from the very beginning the office of Mediatress of all men, and consequently even of the Saints, it was also requisite from the very beginning she should have a grace exceeding that of all the Saints for whom she was to intercede. I will explain myself more clearly.

You have not come into this world for the sake of enjoyment, to grow rich and powerful; to eat, to drink, to sleep like irrational animals, but solely to love your God and work out your eternal salvation. And is this the object I have had hitherto in view?